The Wrong Person
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Summary: Despite a checkered romantic history, Janeway summons up the courage to risk her heart again. Will Seven return her feelings? Nonexplicit slash. Language, some adult situations.


TITLE: The Wrong Person  
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
RATING: R  
PART: 1/1  
CODES: J/7  
ARCHIVE: Just ask!  
DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns these characters, but never lets them have any fun. I'm here to redress that. Or in this case, *un*dress that...  
SUMMARY: Despite a checkered romantic history, Janeway summons up the courage to risk her heart again. Will Seven share her feelings? "Ladies' Man" (a C/P story) is a companion piece to this, but either may be read separately.  
WARNING: This is an alternate-universe story which contains nonexplicit depiction of a female/female relationship. If you don't like AU's, and/or object to same-sex relationships, read no further.  
  
  
  
The Wrong Person  
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
  
  
As she dressed for the ship's Christmas party, Captain Kathryn Janeway asked herself why she'd always had such a knack for falling in love with the wrong people.  
  
When she had been in high school, her choice had been a star athlete, brilliant, handsome, and completely self-absorbed. She still shuddered at the abasement she'd put herself through to win his bare attention. When she'd finally summoned the nerve to tell him that she was entering the Academy, will-he-or-nil-he, he'd stormed from her in a fit of temper that had appalled, horrified, saddened her -- and when she'd had the time to reflect on it, made her grateful to be free of him.  
  
At the Academy, her desire had focused on an older man, an officer, one of her own teachers. //Gods,// she thought, tugging a brush through her hair, exasperated with herself. //Am I keeping his name from *myself* now? Admiral. Owen.// Tom Paris would have been appalled if he knew the intensity with which Kathryn Janeway had once lusted after his father. Not that he was ever likely to find out; in point of fact, she didn't think his father had ever found out, either. At the time Kathryn had known the admiral, he had already been married for some years, a fact that kept her lips firmly sealed but did nothing to deter her vivid dreams.  
  
Brushing completed, Kathryn twisted her hair up into a soft, loose bun, the motions familiar despite having gone unpracticed for a few years. The formal style not only suited her, but would also be completely appropriate for the events of the evening. The pins slid into place with absent skill.  
  
After that frustrating time at the Academy, she had gone to her first posting more than ripe for a real lover. So she fell, hard, for Elena Morovna, slightly her senior in the Mercury's Sciences department and everything Kathryn wanted to be: tall, shapely, and vivacious. Elena swept Kathryn off her feet (figuratively and sometimes literally), into an affair marked by the kind of passion Voyager's captain had never shared with anyone before or since. A touch of the beautiful brunette's fingers, a heated glance from those deep-brown eyes, and Janeway had been helpless with desire.  
  
Others in the crew tried to warn her, but she did not listen, did not *want* to listen. And so Kathryn was perhaps the only person on board who was surprised when she made an unexpected visit to Elena's cabin one day, thinking to leave a small love-token -- and walked in on her dazzling lover, supposedly on duty, actually naked, in bed, and engaged in passionate sixty-nine with a buxom brunette from Engineering.  
  
After Kathryn made what recovery a very young woman can from such humiliation, she decided that she'd had enough. She threw herself into her career, with a zeal and energy that (added to her natural gifts) eventually won her, not only the respect of her more-experienced crewmates, but also that rarest and most surprising of all accolades: recommendation to Command School.  
  
Captain Janeway's slender fingers hesitated over her small selection of eye makeup. Normally, she preferred a natural look, and so applied her few cosmetics with a delicate hand. Still, this *was* a party, and considering who was likely to be in attendance....well, excess would be neither appropriate nor appreciated, but a bit of color might suit. A touch of soft green, accented by an equally-muted gold, she decided.  
  
One might think that, surrounded by career-minded classmates and self-sworn against love, Command Candidate Janeway would lead a celibate life. One would be mistaken. In the company of those who, like her, wanted no commitments beyond career, she was free to indulge the full range of her sexuality: earthy, sensual, and passionate. She had more lovers in one six-month span than before and since combined: male and female, human and otherwise; all in her bed for the simple pleasure of being there. She told herself she enjoyed it immensely.  
  
Then Kathryn caught herself yearning for the one Vulcan in the group: dignified, discreet, and the only one in all her circle who had never expressed the slightest interest in sleeping with her. As she longed for that quiet regard, she realized she had been living a lie. Sexual acrobatics might be (hell, *were*) pleasurable, but they were not enough for Kathryn Janeway. She craved the love of the heart quite as much as she craved the love of the body.  
  
Kathryn spent the next few months trying to win T'Mar's esteem, but that never worked out, either. She suspected that her efforts had been sabotaged by her earlier profligacy.  
  
The captain regarded her face in the mirror, was pleased to see how skillfully she had enhanced her natural beauty. There was no disguising the signs of middle age, the lines and creases that experience had drawn (though lightly, as yet) into her face, but in this enlightened era no one would hold the fact of her age against her. Especially not anyone as rational as....she laid the makeup brushes down and went to her wardrobe.  
  
Kathryn had pretty much kept to herself on her first shipboard posting after that -- or tried to, anyway. If she and Captain Rodriguez had never been trapped in that cave-in together, she probably would never have admitted, even to herself, how attractive, charismatic, engaging she found him. But, cliché as it seemed even at the time, proximity (or perceived proximity) to death has a way of eroding barriers and releasing inhibitions. And she was not the only one who'd felt secret love and desire....  
  
The affair lasted a few months afterward, longer than she had expected -- cruelly, long enough to thoroughly reacquaint her heart and her body with the feel of passion. But she had known from the outset how it must end, and so when he came to her to tell her that his ethics and their futures demanded that they separate, she had agreed, quietly and composedly. What weeping she did came long after Eduin Rodriguez left her cabin.  
  
Kathryn gathered the long chemise up in her hands and carefully drew it down past her hair before sliding her arms beneath the straps. The silky white garment dropped down over her body, fitting sleekly over her breasts, flowing gracefully over her flat belly, rounded hips and slender legs. Snowy lace kissed her ankles.  
  
Then Mark had returned to her life. Good old Mark. Good old safe, dependable, friend-from-the-old-neighborhood Mark. Good old Mark who had patiently loved her all these years, waiting for the moment when she would notice his devotion.  
  
Kathryn had had enough both of grand love affairs and of raw lust. It was nice to be with someone she could relax with, someone she could trust. A quiet, low-maintenance companion like Mark was an ideal partner for a busy, driven command officer: someone who could keep the home fires burning while she was away, take care of the dogs and the house and the mail and be a warm pair of arms and a cozy bed to return to. And she could trust him; after all, he loved her so.  
  
They drifted into an engagement before she realized the one crucial flaw in their pairing: *she* didn't love *him*. Oh, she liked him well enough; he was so easy-going he was almost impossible to dislike. But that very quality made him incapable of igniting her passion; she liked her partners with more fire and drive than he'd ever dreamed of possessing.  
  
Before she could do anything about that little problem, though, Voyager had been swept into the Delta Quadrant.  
  
Kathryn drew her attire for the evening from the closet, and regarded it thoughtfully. In cut and trim, the gown would have suited a Jane Austen heroine: high-waisted and short-sleeved, with a deep round neckline that would expose a fair amount of skin without actually baring anything that couldn't be shown in polite company. Lace bordered neckline, cuff, and hem, the last word in elegance for the era the dress was supposed to represent.  
  
Only the color would have kept this dress from appearing in illustrations of "Pride and Prejudice": it was a deep emerald green, quite unsuited to the young, virginal heroines Austen favored. Well, Kathryn was neither young nor virginal, and she'd often been told that emerald made her eyes sparkle. All things considered, she thought tonight would be a good night to test that theory. Though in truth, she would be much happier if the dress made someone *else's* eyes sparkle...  
  
Carefully, she unseamed the back seam of the dress and lifted it over her head. Like the chemise, it slipped gracefully over her curves.  
  
For a time, guilt had kept her loyal to Mark, coupled with the certainty that he would be loyal to *her*. Not that there had been no temptations.  
  
Given her penchant for wanting the wrong person, Kathryn was a bit amazed she'd never fallen in love with Chakotay. A wanted criminal, the man she'd been sent to arrest, *and* her second-in-command -- you just couldn't *get* any wronger than that. And Chakotay was not without his charms, to be sure: a handsome man with a winning smile, an off-center sense of humor, and an obvious capacity for passion. Add to that the easy rapport that characterized their interactions almost from the beginning, and Kathryn was truly amazed that she had never felt the urge to take their relationship beyond friendship. But somehow the necessary spark had never been struck.  
  
Perhaps because she had been too busy watching B'Elanna Torres. Now *there* was a package: passion and ferocity and unaware beauty all in one lithe form. One lithe, very *young* form. One lithe, very young form that from the beginning was clearly interested in being wrapped around the even-younger form of one Harry Kim. Which, of course, made her quite the wrong choice for Kathryn as well. (Not that the knowledge helped. It never did.)  
  
In the wake of B'Elanna's marriage to Harry, Kathryn gave Tom Paris a passing thought. He was quite handsome and more than a bit daring -- the only man on Voyager who'd ever had the chutzpah to actually hit on the captain. But her attraction was never more than superficial, as the young pilot was too much the rake, too eager to demonstrate his prowess by cutting a wide swath through the ship's female complement. Probably just as well, as it would have been entirely too uncanny for Kathryn to form a relationship with the son of the man who had obsessed her all through her Academy years.  
  
Besides, she had already seen the looks her first officer was casting at Tom Paris. She wondered if Chakotay himself was quite aware of them, but suspected he was not. Tom Paris, the ladies' man...between this and Seska, Chakotay's luck in love appeared to be much like her own, poor man.  
  
Sliding her small feet into a pair of low-heeled satin slippers, Janeway turned to her full-length mirror. A vision from the past greeted her: an elegant lady clad in garments fitted enough to display her figure, yet loose enough to flow and sweep.  
  
She looked pretty good, if she had to say so herself. (Though she rather hoped someone else would be willing to say it for her!) Collecting the finishing touches, a lacy kerchief and a small silk fan, she turned toward her cabin door and swept out into the hallway.  
  
Then there had been Kes. Dear, beautiful Kes...Kathryn had braved Nikani caves and Nikani mysticism to rescue that curious young explorer from a certain death, and never counted the cost. But holding the younger woman in her arms, even in dire circumstances, had only fueled Kathryn's desire to hold her again.  
  
When Kes broke up with Neelix, Kathryn had actually thought it might be possible to pursue her attraction to the lovely Ocampa. Then she'd spoken to Kes...only to see the blue eyes widen, the pretty face turn apologetic. It seemed that Kes, like Tom Paris, was one of that minority who was attracted only to one gender -- in Kes's case, male.  
  
Embarrassed, Janeway had retreated. Not long after that, Chakotay approached the captain, offering a curious pact: he and she could play the roles of a courting couple, so that neither would have to deal with would-be suitors. "Mutual protection," Chakotay called it. After her latest debacle, Kathryn was more than ready to accept his offer. (She did wonder briefly if he'd had the same experience with Tom that she'd had with Kes, but nothing changed in the way he looked at Paris, so she suspected he was simply trying to avoid temptation.)  
  
The agreement worked well enough. Chakotay was an attractive escort, a charming companion, and a good friend. If Kathryn felt no more passion for him than she'd ever felt for Mark, well, at least he didn't expect her to.  
  
Exchanging desultory greetings with various officers as she glided through the hallways and rode a lift to the proper floor, the captain felt her heartbeat quicken as she approached the site of tonight's revels.  
  
She had thought that, bruised by Kes's gentle rebuff and shielded by her pleasant partnership with Chakotay, her heart would be safe from any further inappropriate involvements.  
  
Then Seven of Nine joined Voyager's "collective."  
  
Thereby proving the gods (if gods there were, which Janeway personally still doubted despite her experience with the Nikani) had no pity on wayward starship captains. Apparently it wasn't enough that Seven of Nine was drop-dead gorgeous, with a striking face and a figure that would have put a strip queen to shame. Oh, no. It wasn't enough that she had the kind of deep, throaty voice that holoporn actresses could only aspire to. Oh, no. It wasn't even enough that she was brilliant. In addition to all of that, she was proud, imperious, and more strong-willed than any man or woman Kathryn Janeway had ever known.  
  
And she had the emotional awareness of a small child.  
  
Kathryn had fought the inevitable as long as she could. //Seven of Nine looks at me as a mother-figure,// the captain had told herself, then //Seven needs me to be her friend.// Finally, when the lonely comfort of Kathryn's own hands proved utterly insufficient after certain vivid, tormenting dreams, //Seven isn't *ready* for a lover yet, dammit!// Knowing, even as she admonished herself, that those dazzlingly blue eyes and sensuously full lips would appear behind her closed eyelids the moment she tried to resume sleep, as surely as the touch of those strong, slender hands would seem to caress her drowsing body.  
  
But in these last months, Seven had begun to develop a better understanding of herself and others -- begun, in short, to grow up. Her relationship with the captain had become, if not a relationship of equals (that being impossible for a captain and anyone for whom she assumed responsibility), then more a relationship of two adults.  
  
Kathryn had still been hesitant.  
  
Then she learned that the Doctor (of all people!) was tutoring Seven in the art of social interaction. Specifically, on the rules of dating. //If she's ready to learn about dating, then she's ready to learn about...well, maybe more than dating,// the would-be suitor thought hopefully.  
  
But if that were to be so, the caption would have to make her own chance. To her bemusement, the Doctor had selected his own list of suitable dating prospects for his beautiful protégéé -- all male. //What century does he think this is again?// the captain asked herself rhetorically, but concluded that the Doctor's casual assumption of Seven's heterosexuality probably had as much to do with wishful thinking as anything else. She'd noticed the way the hologram regarded the lovely Borg.  
  
What the Doctor wanted and what Seven wanted could very well be two different things. For that matter, what Kathryn wanted and what Seven wanted could be two different things, too. (The memory of Kes's apologetic expression surfaced briefly, only to be forced firmly down.) But win or lose, pain or joy, Kathryn meant to find out tonight. //I've waited a long time to ask the question, Seven.//  
  
Her heart pounded harder, but she would let none of her anxiety show in her face. Skirts swaying elegantly about her legs, the captain entered the holodeck, and another time.  
  
She passed through a small anteroom first, where holographic cloaks and coats hung to look as if the party's guests had actually traveled through inclement weather. Then she stepped into the brightly-lit ballroom of an old English country manse. //Beautiful.// Crystal chandeliers glittered in the light of dozen of candles, including those which adorned a tall Christmas tree that nearly brushed the room's high ceiling. The fragrant smell of burning hardwood issued from a large fireplace, mingling with savory aromas from all the traditional dishes that covered the groaning buffet tables.  
  
Many of the crew were already on hand, splashes of bright color against creamy walls and wood-toned floors. Like Kathryn, most had selected garb that suited the era: the women in bright, high-waisted gowns, the men in tight, fitted breeches, high-collared white shirts, and satiny waistcoats. Despite her nerves, Janeway made a moue of appreciation as Ken Dalby sauntered past in a particularly well-tailored example of male costume. Dalby, noticing, bowed and grinned before returning to his pursuit of a red-gowned Mariah Henley.  
  
Was *she* here? Janeway no sooner asked the question of herself than answered it, as she sighted Seven standing before one of the high, wreath-adorned windows. The beautiful ex-Borg, clad in a long blue dress that fitted tightly (a shade *too* tightly; Janeway recognized the EMH's tailoring style again) over her full breasts and draped gracefully over the rest of her lush curves, appeared to be in earnest conference with the Doctor. //Damn. Well, I've waited this long; a few more minutes won't kill me. Besides,// -- in all fairness -- //I should talk to Chakotay first, and let him know he's about to lose his "relationship protection."// The last thing either she or Chakotay needed was a string of well-wishers commiserating with him over her "infidelity" in pursuing Seven.  
  
Kathryn scanned the room for her first officer, but he was nowhere in sight. She just managed not to tap her foot as she waited, one eye on Seven and the other on the door as she automatically exchanged holiday greetings with various members of the crew.  
  
After what seemed far too long, but was probably no more than minutes, Chakotay stumbled (stumbled?) in, looking distracted. After a few moments, his eyes settled on her, and she walked quickly toward him.  
  
He met her in the middle of the room. "Kathryn --" he said, an urgent sound to his voice.  
  
"Chakotay --" she began, only a heartbeat behind.  
  
"We need to talk," they said in the same moment, then stopped and stared. She wondered if the trepidation in her own eyes mirrored that in his.  
  
Suddenly his expression cleared, as if in comprehension. "Maybe we don't," he suggested slyly, a hint of mirth on his lips.  
  
//Maybe we --? Oh. *Oh!*// The revelation came quickly and completely, and she chuckled, as much in genuine amusement as in relief. //What a coincidence!// "No, I guess we don't. So do we need to have an argument, or can we just have an amicable 'break-up'?" she teased.  
  
"I'd like us to stay friends," he joked back, and she felt the warmth of their long, albeit thoroughly platonic, relationship in the words.  
  
"I hope we always will," she answered, more seriously, leaning up to place a sisterly kiss on his cheek. "Good luck with him, Chakotay."  
  
He squeezed her hand, his smile filled with fond appreciation. "Thanks. Good luck with her, Kathryn."  
  
"Thanks." She turned away from him then, toward where Seven had been standing with the Doctor -- to see that the younger woman now stood alone, looking pensive. Then brilliant blue eyes lit on the captain and, to Kathryn's surprise, seriousness vanished as the full lips curved upward into a radiant smile. //Oh God oh God oh God...// Kathryn walked quickly toward that shining beauty, barely daring to let herself hope.  
  
"Seven," she said, almost stumbling over the syllables. "We need -- I need to talk to you."  
  
The ex-drone regarded Kathryn for a moment, still smiling. "Talking is inefficient," she answered, with her customarily precise diction. "I prefer direct action."  
  
Before the captain could think of another word to say, Seven of Nine wrapped long arms around her and gathered her in, ardently (if awkwardly) planting a searing kiss on her commanding officer's half-parted lips.  
  
Oh God, Seven had no sense of occasion, did not realize that the captain didn't, couldn't, engage in this kind of activity before her crew no matter how welcome it was or how long she had wanted it --  
  
But instead of objecting, Kathryn Janeway leaned into the other woman and deepened the kiss. She felt the surge of Seven's heart against her breast, and her own heart sang as they stood there locked into their joyful embrace.  
  
She had found the right person.  
  
Oh God, at last.  
  
--The Beginning-- 


End file.
